[Vision2020] And now a word from Thomas Soul

[keely emerinemix]

You know damned well that the Black writer, Thomas Sowell, does not spell his name "Soul."  

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/


> Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 10:50:18 -0230
> From: no.weatherman at gmail.com
> To: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: [Vision2020] And now a word from Thomas Soul
> 
> Do Facts Matter?
> By Thomas Sowell
> Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time
> and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people
> all the time."
> 
> Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the
> Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election
> day, just a few weeks from now.
> 
> Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being
> fooled a whole lot of the time.
> 
> The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back
> into a substantial lead over John McCain — which is astonishing in
> view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing
> on this crisis.
> 
> It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and
> the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
> 
> Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher
> Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years — including the
> present year — denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big
> risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
> 
> It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who
> for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an
> agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
> 
> It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years
> pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting
> subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial
> crisis.
> 
> Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the
> Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary
> of the Treasury, five years ago.
> 
> Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration
> "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the
> financial crisis. Do facts matter?
> 
> We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the
> facts show that it was the government that pressured financial
> institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such
> things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal
> action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like
> the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
> 
> Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
> 
> Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and
> for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head
> of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
> 
> Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including
> Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom
> referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him
> to the same standard as white CEOs.
> 
> Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was
> consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
> 
> The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines
> an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the
> Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin
> here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But
> someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on
> a letterhead.
> 
> The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way.
> Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial
> contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.
> 
> But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
> 
> Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.
> 
> The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public.
> Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to
> counter-attack. They deserve to lose.
> 
> But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and
> cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the
> advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years
> allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed
> their hatred of America.
> http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/do_facts_matter.html
> 
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